Emigre Soviet Scientists Remain Jobless In U.S., Despite Experience

New York alliance offers guidance and support to Russian researchers who are seeking employment in their adopted country Alexander Bolonkin, a mathematician specializing in aerodynamics, has a 10-year gap in his r‚sum‚, from 1972 to 1982, because he was serving time in a Soviet prison camp. Bolonkin is now studying English, but he still has quite a bit to learn; he says he came to the United States "1« hours ago" when he means "1« years ago." Since arriving in the U.S., he has managed to find some temporary work at two financial firms, but, because of his poor English, neither of these stints turned into permanent positions. Analytical chemist Marianna Karabach worked in forensics for about 20 years in Moscow before emigrating last year. "On my r‚sum‚ I hide that I am Ph.D.," to avoid appearing overqualified for jobs in the U.S., she says. In fact, she has grown so used to hiding her Ph.D. that she fails to mention it even at a gathering of Soviet émigré‚ scientists. And there are many, many more stories of unemployment and underemployment among ‚migr‚ scientists from the Soviet Union, despite a widely predicted shortage of scientists in the U.S. in the coming decades. U.S. refugee-aid groups estimate that approximately 40,000 Soviet ‚migr‚s will arrive in the U.S. this year, 30 percent of whom are scientists or engineers with some R&D experience. Because Jews are one of the few ethnic groups permitted to emigrate from the Soviet Union, most of these scientists are Jewish. Before leaving the U.S.S.R., some of them--known as "re-fuseniks"--spent years awaiting permission from the Soviet authorities to emigrate (The Scientist, Feb. 19, 1990, page 5). Like Bolonkin and Karabach, many of the ‚migr‚s are finding that education and experience alone are not enough to land jobs. Insufficient knowledge of English is their major obstacle, preventing them from communicating their skills to prospective employers. Other émigrés are the victims of what they perceive as an American prejudice against Soviet technology, generally viewed as inferior by U.S. scientists, or against job applicants over 50--the age group of a large number of the Soviet job hunters. Compounding the problem is their unfamiliarity with r‚sum‚ writing, interviewing, salary negotiating, and other skills that are unnecessary in a communist economy in which workers are generally assigned to jobs and thus spared the task of seeking out employers. "It's not in the Soviet culture to advertise myself," says Yury Rabinovich, a telecommunications engineer who has been in the U.S. for 2« years. Since last May, immigrant scientists in New York seeking help with their job search have had a second place to turn. The New York Association for New Americans (NYANA), a 41-year-old refugee-aid society, recently formed a Science and Technology Advisory Board to assist technical professionals entering the United States. Emigr‚ scientists can now use these career-development services to augment the professional contacts and the moral support offered by the Association of Scientists and Engineers for New Americans. Originally established to aid survivors of the Holocaust, NYANA now focuses chiefly on resettlement of Soviet immigrants, although the group also assists refugees from Iran and Southeast Asia. Its new advisory board primarily serves Soviets because the other refugees generally do not have a high-tech background, according to board chairman Stephen Rosen. Rosen, an American-born astrophysicist, organizes job-hunting, r‚sum‚-writing, and interviewing workshops for the ‚migr‚ scientists. In addition to working for NYANA part-time, he does consulting for science and technology firms. He tries to place the newcomers by circulating to prospective employers a newsletter listing the job-seekers' qualifications and by calling on the resources of his advisory board, a group of several dozen well-connected technical professionals. He is currently working on behalf of about 100 Soviet scientists and engineers. His placement efforts are not limited to New York; employers from as far away as California have come to him for candidates. In his employment-strategy courses, Rosen draws on his own resources as well as those of NYANA, which receives funding from Jewish philanthropic sources, the U.S. Department of State and Department of Health and Human Services, and several private foundations. NYANA provides a workstation--with computers, typewriters, and telephones--especially for the job-hunting technical professionals, in addition to its general refugee-aid program. Rosen, whose workshops are based on job-hunting techniques developed by U.S. executive outplacement firms, helps to hone the scientists' interviewing skills through role playing; practice sessions are videotaped and then critiqued. Rosen tells the immigrants about resources such as the Philadelphia-based Institute for Scientific Information's Science Citation Index, teaching them how to determine whether their papers have been cited by any U.S. researchers, and, if so, how to use these Western scientists as contacts. "The more time I spend on grooming [the immigrant scientists], the less time I have to spend on marketing them," Rosen says. For more information, contact NYANA, 111 Fifth Ave., New York, N.Y. 10003; (212) 533-0110. --B.S. "Professionally, almost all of us are equal to American professionals. But we have a lack of diplomacy, a lack of the right [job-hunting] tactics," says chemist Alex Loev, who came to the U.S. 2« years ago and now works at Sun Chemical in New Jersey. His unemployed friends are "suffering from a lack of confidence," he says. It comes as a tremendous shock and disappointment to the Soviets that obtaining a job in the U.S. is not easy or automatic, even for highly educated candidates. Many have earned not only the "candidate nauk" degree--roughly the equivalent of the U.S Ph.D.--but also a "doctorat nauk," which is granted after prolific research output, generally after years of work beyond the Ph.D. "I cannot believe that American firms don't need our skills, our knowledge," geologist Solomon Sosland says. Sosland, who has 45 papers to his credit, came to the U.S. three months ago and is still reeling from the disappointing discovery that in most cases, in order to get a job, the Soviets "have to forget about our Ph.D., forget about [having obtained the rank of] assistant professor, forget about [having been promoted to] professor." Although the unfamiliar environment may result in feelings of alienation among these Soviet scientists, they do not have to explore the U.S. job market entirely on their own. Since 1981, they have been able to find assistance and camaraderie at the offices of the Association of Engineers and Scientists for New Americans (AES), a self-help organization of immigrant technical professionals. Based in New York, where a large number of the Soviet scientists have settled, AES forges connections between the newcomers and American colleagues who can introduce them to the job market. With the help of these mentors, the group identifies potential job openings for the immigrant scientists in New York and other cities, and designs special courses to acquaint them with scientific terminology in English. In addition, AES arranges for its constituents to participate in professional seminars, helping them to prepare papers for presentation and arranging for them to obtain travel funds or grants for scientific research when possible. AES is the brainchild of Peyrets Goldmacher, an engineer who came to the U.S. in 1979 at the age of 59. "I tried to find a job, and found it is not easy. It was a very painful experience," says Goldmacher, who is now executive vice president of engineering at Joel Meisner & Co., Inc., a Farmingdale, N.Y.-based foundry, in addition to serving in a volunteer capacity as AES' president. "I came to the idea that we have to do something to unite ourselves" as a means of easing the transition into American society. Two years after Goldmacher's arrival on U.S. shores, AES was born. Initially a gathering of four or five people, it now has more than 1,000 members, with two full-time and four part-time employees. AES is an extremely important resource for immigrant scientists because it provides "a kind of psychotherapy," says Alex Loev, who worked as the association's program director before obtaining his job at Sun Chemical last year. AES meetings, at which job seekers share their concerns, are "like confession," Loev says. Soon after AES was formed, it joined forces with the Jewish Union of Russian Immigrants, an umbrella organization that provides some financial support to the association. Additional funds for the group have come from various New York state agencies and Jewish philanthropies. Goldmacher boasts that about 90 percent of the organization's $200,000 budget is used to provide direct services. But a drawback to holding down the administrative costs is that the association's personnel are too busy serving the constituents to look for new sources of funding. "We don't have the possibility to do so much work--to sit in the office and develop [funding] proposals," Goldmacher says. One of AES' most important functions is helping to establish networks between the immigrant scientists and their U.S. colleagues-- native-born Americans as well as immigrants who have established themselves in the U.S. scientific community. Having a mentor is crucial for a Soviet scientist's job search, says Goldmacher, because a more experienced working scientist can "explain to him who could be interested in what he is doing." But establishing connections between the newcomers and U.S. scientists with similar experiences is challenging in itself, according to Goldmacher. "We don't have the staff to analyze every single person and send them to the right person." In addition to its Russian-speaking constituents, the association has aided scientists and engineers from Poland, Romania, Yugoslavia, and other areas of Eastern Europe. Although the group is open to immigrants from any country, "communication is a bit more complicated" if prospective members do not speak English or Russian, Goldmacher says. Philip Gorbulsky, a program director for AES, is primarily responsible for helping to find more mentors for the Soviet scientists. "They call me a matchmaker," says Gorbulsky, a research engineer who came to the U.S. 2« years ago. Such connections are made largely through word of mouth, he says. "I ask my friends for job leads; those friends also have friends who give us the opportunity to refer people to them" for advice and support. In addition to "matchmaking," Gorbulsky is often asked to rewrite the r‚sum‚s of Soviet job seekers who have trouble mastering English. But one of his most important duties is acting as a source of moral support and explaining the complexities of the U.S. job-hunting ritual. "I tell them that if you send out 1,000 r‚sum‚s, you will probably get 10 answers," he says. When they first come to the U.S., Soviet émigré scientists receive financial aid from refugee-assistance services. Eventually, many of them end up going on welfare or taking jobs that are well below their level of experience. Russian-speaking cab drivers and synagogue custodians have become fixtures in New York in recent years. "Luckier" Soviets with scientific training end up as computer programmers, air-conditioning mechanics, or lab technicians. "This is a tragedy," says Irena Khomutov, counselor for Russian-speaking clients at New York's Private Industry Council, an agency that provides partial subsidies to employers who hire the immigrants and receives referrals from AES. Newcomers seeking vocational training or job placement from the Private Industry Council "come to us after they have been through a kind of hell on their own," says Khomutov. After suffering through a fruitless job search, "many of them are quite prepared for lower positions--not just one level below, but four or five levels below [their education]," she says. AES' staff and volunteer mentors are hopeful that the efforts of the association may lead to a decrease in the numbers of ‚migr‚ scientists who have to accept such a great reduction in status. "America has received a gift--hundreds and thousands of people with high education," says Goldmacher. "The problem is how to use these brains, and put them to work in our society." For more information, contact AES at 45-35 Kissena Blvd., Flushing, N.Y. 11355; (718) 961-8915, or 45 E. 33rd St., 2nd Floor, New York, N.Y. 10016; (212) 447-5040.

Emigre Soviet Scientists Remain Jobless In U.S., Despite Experience

Interested in reading more?

Become a Member of